Winter 2005 Rapport: Pentecostal Potential in Post-Christian
Times

Things have changed. In the world of my childhood
(the 1950s), 95% of Americans practiced the religion of their
parents, with 75% of them attending services weekly. This year,
one adult in six will change religious and/or congregational
affiliation, with about 40% claiming to attend worship regularly.
A nation largely populated by Protestants, Catholics and Jews
in the middle of the last century, features 2000 religions
(and counting) in this century.

Slowly, the United States is migrating toward
a post-Christian status. Historical monotheism now has a new
companion and competitor: personal spirituality. As one observer
has noted, we are in revival; it’s just not a Christian
revival. Actress Alyssa Milano exemplifies this condition when
she states, “I believe in everything. I was raised Catholic,
but now I’m more Buddhist. But I don’t practice
anything specifically.” While worship attendance is higher
in the U.S. than in any other industrialized nation, devotion
to personal spiritualities is gradually displacing the Church
at the center of our culture. Christianity is hardly gone,
but it is considered just one option on a menu of spiritual
choices. What has happened to us and how should Pentecostals
respond?

Post-Christianity

In some respects, the evolution
of post-Christianity simply is a matter of mathematics. When
the number of people being added to the Church falls below
the number departing, the Church will go into decline. Consider
these indicators that the American church is struggling to
connect with contemporary culture:

“Baby Busters (born 1965-1983) have proven to be
the most gospel-resistant generation the Church has seen
in many years.”1

“Since 1991, the number of adults who do not attend
church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—a
92% increase.”2

When adults are asked their religious preference in opinion
polls, the fastest growing response is “none.”

The age of American worshippers is much older than that
of the general population3.
(Fig. 1)

While there are notable exceptions to these observations,
the general drift of our culture is certainly to marginalize
the Christian church. However, the method of displacement is
not so much persecution as competition in a free religious
market. For example, Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar (better
known as Buffy the Vampire Slayer) explained her spirituality
in a newspaper interview: “I consider myself a spiritual
person…I believe in an idea of God, although it’s
my own personal ideal. I find most religions interesting, and
I’ve been to every kind of denomination: Catholic, Christian,
Jewish, Buddhist. I’ve taken bits from everything and
customized it.”4 Customized
spirituality now is America’s folk religion. Post-Christians
are as committed to it as the “very religious” Athenians
were to the many idols that populated their city (Acts 17:22,
23). In fact, one American adult in five now reports being “spiritual
but not religious.”

Pentecostal Potential

PotentialPentecostals need to ask how we are going to come
to terms with an increasingly post-Christian context. Are we
able to preach to the “men of Athens” as well as
to the city of Jerusalem? The issue for North American Pentecostals
is not so much one of survival, but of potential: Will we rise
to the challenge of post-Christian times to become everything
we can be? Or, more simply, can a pastor in a blue suit possibly
relate to a skater kid with blue hair? Reasons to believe that
Pentecostalism has the potential to make a substantial missionary
impact on post-Christian cultures include the following:

A revival movement fits an era when revival is
the need. The number of Jesus’ followers
present in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost was about
the size of the average Assemblies of God church. They
represented the sum total of three years of teaching, miracles
and personal discipleship by the Son of God. Then, 3,000
people were brought into the church when Peter’s
sermon responded to the question, “What does this
mean?” (Acts 2:12, NIV) These converts represented
over a dozen provinces and nations of the Mediterranean
world. In a matter of moments, the Holy Spirit transformed
a small praying band into a global church. A massive outpouring
of the Spirit is precisely what the American church needs
today. The longing for revival is a core component (a “chromosome”)
of Pentecostalism. In truth, everything else has been tried.

Pentecostals are at their best when things are
at their worst. The contemporary Pentecostal movement
began in humble locations such as Azusa Street. Only since
World War II has the American stream of the movement enjoyed
larger churches, padded pews, middle class stature, suburban
lifestyles and evangelical respectability. However, these
blessings have had an unanticipated consequence: We have
worked hard to position ourselves at the center of a society
that is now relegating us to the margin.

The choice before us is between life on the margin and life at the edge.
We are at our best when forced to depend radically on the power of the
Holy Spirit to co-labor with Christ. Our lowly origins tell us that tremendous
accomplishments are attainable for those who understand, “apart from
me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NIV). We must not allow some numerical
success during the last few decades to obscure the fact that everything
is possible only when nothing is possible without God.

Pentecostals need to ask themselves hard questions, such as “Are
we doing anything dangerous enough that the Holy Spirit just has to show
up?” Such questions are uncomfortable, but they remind us that we
are made for the edge, not for the center; the Spirit has come to send
us from Jerusalem to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV).
Our challenge is to be willing to sacrifice respectability, status and
control. But it is in exactly these conditions that Pentecostals have turned
to God in utter surrender and found that he is still “able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that
is at work within us” (Eph. 3:20, NIV).

Pentecostals make better missionaries than maintenance
engineers. We have a lot to lose these days. There
are programs to plan, technologies to master, savings to
accumulate, buildings to construct, PowerPoint® slides
to design and meetings to attend. These things are all
good but they can tend to become an end in themselves if
we are not careful. In my travels across the fellowship,
I have found pastors longing to do more for the kingdom
of God. They are tired of oiling the gears of church machinery
and coaching the saints for a game they never actually
play.

Pentecostals simply are not meant to thrive in maintenance mode. Rising
to our potential means re-visioning ministry as, first and foremost, a
missionary enterprise. This emphasis does not mean that the pastoral needs
of the church are to be neglected, but rather that the best way to serve
the church is to help its members understand their own lives in missionary
terms. A hard question to ask here might be, “What percentage of
the people in our largest meeting (e.g., Sunday morning) are here by conversion?” The
answer is likely to make us somewhat uncomfortable, but it can catalyze
a change in perspective that brings out the best in us—a missionary
passion that accepts no substitutes.

Pentecostals understand the supernatural as present
in the natural. The sociologists’ prediction
that America would become a secular nation during the 20th
century has been dashed. Post-Christians lean strongly
on the spiritual realm. For example, eight in ten adults
report that they would like to experience spiritual growth,
and pop singer Jewel says that she is on a “quest
for knowledge of things larger than herself.” Indeed,
she speaks for a generation.

This kaleidoscopic spirituality involves a level of diversity that can
be bewildering to the person raised in church. However, it is in exactly
such contexts that the Pentecostal mission has proved to be most effective.
The rapid advancement of the gospel in cultures that practice folk religions
(e.g., animism, folk Islam) is testimony to the importance of preaching
the gospel, “not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration
of the Spirit’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4, NIV). Power ministry has
proven essential among populations highly sensitized to the spiritual world.

When the fire consumed the sacrifice on Elijah’s altar on Mount Carmel,
the people fell prostrate and proclaimed, “the LORD—He is God!” (1
Kings 18:39, NIV). North America needs to make this same confession, but
will do so when they have reason to believe that Christianity represents
more than self-help formulas, hollow ritual and judgmental tirades. The
power of God must come to heal and deliver.

Dr.
Earl CrepsDirector, D.Min.
Program in Pentecostal
Leadership

My field research has turned up many dozens of miracle
stories among our younger leaders reaching out to post-Christians.
Often signs and wonders have occurred after conventional
methods and models have proven futile. Desperation turned
to dependence, and dependence turned to power dynamics.
No one becomes famous, but the hurting are being healed.
God is ready to develop our full potential. The hard question
is, are we? The movement’s potential will be realized,
not by being less Pentecostal, but by being more so.

Resources for Reaching Post-Christians

Clegg, Tom, and Warren BirdLost in America: How You and Your Church Can Impact the
World Next Door (Group 2001)